Wherever You Will Go
by Laura Schiller
Summary: A "Good Shepherd"/"37's" mashup. Not a single crewmember chose to leave Voyager. What about the three who didn't belong?


Wherever You Will Go

By Laura Schiller

Based on Star Trek: Voyager

"So are you staying?"

That question had been heard around every corner of the ship for days – whispered in Engineering and on the Bridge, spoken out loud in the mess hall, murmured in bed, in tones that ranged from confident hope to outright fear. As usual, no one had asked Mortimer Harren for his opinion, and he wasn't interested in sharing it to begin with. He sat in his usual corner in the mess hall, hunched over a padd, trying to block out the sounds of conversation nearby. The pair of very young crewmen at the next table, however, were not making it easy. He glanced at them from the corner of his eye.

They were a Human man in science green and a Bajoran woman in engineering yellow, both thin and delicate-looking, both with the heavy-eyed look of children staying up too late. They were not arguing loudly as some were, but their very quietness distracted him. Unlike him, they were obviously taking Janeway's offer deeply to heart, contemplating a decision that would change the rest of their lives.

"Are you?" asked the boy.

The girl lowered her eyes, eyelashes fluttering uncertainly. The fingers holding her padd tapped it against the table. Once. Twice. "I don't know … I mean, it's tempting."

Harren snorted under his breath. _He_ wasn't tempted in the least.

"Is it?" asked the boy.

The girl nodded. "I could be anything I wanted down there. A nanny, a housekeeper, maybe even a cook like my parents. No algorithms." She tapped the padd a little harder. "No Torres and Carey breathing down my neck, no Vorik raising that eyebrow at my stupidity - "

"You're not stupid, Celes," her human friend assured her warmly, putting his hand on top of hers to stop the motion. "You just learn things in your own way. That's nothing to be ashamed of."

"That's sweet of you, Billy," she said with a sad smile, as if she didn't quite believe it.

Harren did not think much of a Starfleet officer who couldn't even solve a simple algorithm. _You're not a freak, Morty, _murmured a long-forgotten woman's voice, along with the warmth of a hand across his buzz-cut hair. _You just learn at your own pace, which happens to be too fast for most people to handle. _He forced the memory ruthlessly from his mind. Nobody called him Morty. Or even Mortimer. He was Crewman Harren, and he'd stay that way for the foreseeable future.

"So … " the boy – Billy – prodded, "Does that mean you're thinking about it?"

Celes sighed. "I am … but it depends … "

Harren was anything but skilled in the art of reading expressions, but even he could see that the way she watched that boy with those big black eyes of hers meant a great deal. He doubted, however, that Billy noticed anything at all.

"On what?" asked Billy innocently, confirming his hypothesis.

"On … on whether anyone else is going," she improvised. "I'd hate to be the only Voyager crewman on the planet."

"Hmm. Especially the only Bajoran, right?"

Celes bit her lip. "I guess … although it's not like I really _talk_ to Gerron and Tabor. Or most people, come to think of it. No … no, I really think I'd prefer to stay on the ship."

Harren wondered whether the glaringly obvious subtext to her questions would ever become apparent to the clueless human sitting opposite her – or, failing that, whether she'd grow a spine and say it directly. _I'm not leaving without you _– how hard was that to say?

Never mind the fact that his own mother hadn't said it to him, and he'd never asked. Hence the sixteen years growing up in a bleak and stormy mining colony on Vico IV, with nothing to do but observe the planet's stellar phenomena and count the nights without her there to explain them.

All this talk of new homes, of finding somewhere to belong, was starting to make him queasy. This was exactly why he preferred to eat in his quarters.

He was just about to grab his padd and march out the door when the sudden rise of Billy's voice made him hesitate.

"Oh, well … in that case, I've got to admit you couldn't pay me to stay behind on an alien planet!" the young man said, his floppy brown hair bouncing with emphasis. "God knows what kind of diseases are carried by the local plants and animals."

"Billy, c'mon." Celes rolled her eyes affectionately. "It's a human city every bit as advanced as the Federation's. Don't you think they've got doctors?"

"_Human_ doctors. Our EMH has the experience of hundreds. I trust him absolutely."

"Not enough to stop stealing his tricorders."

"I can't help it! How else am I supposed to know - "

As the two of them fell into what must have been an old, established pattern, Harren couldn't help but notice the incongruous looks of joy on their faces. This hypochondriac and his intellectually deficient friend were not going anywhere without each other, and their relief was so intense, it made them practically glow.

Harren thought of his own decision, and did not regret it. Much as he disliked the constant danger and suffocating lack of privacy on Voyager, he wasn't about to trade it for a planet full of complete strangers. If he had a Billy or a Celes, he would not care whether he lived on a planet, a starship or the bottom of the ocean. As it was, he did not care either. One place, to him, was the same as any other, as long as he was left to work on disproving Schletzold's Multiple Big Bang Theory in peace.

For reasons he did not care to think about, his heart sank down to his polished boots as he left the mess hall.


End file.
